It has been quite a long time since my last update. A lot has happened throughout the summer and early fall months, but the Lord has been faithful and walked with us all the way. Praise His name! This will be a short update and I hope to write a more full update later to fill everyone in on more of the seasons happenings.

I decided to plant some fall produce so we now have the majority of both hoop houses full plus some produce started outdoors also! A few early crops are coming on now and I anticipate more coming on before long.

We have a lot of green onions ready all at once and would love for you to help us use them up! They are great mixed in most green salads, excellent flavoring in egg dishes or soups and are outstanding stir fried with either a little olive oil or with some bacon. You can preserve them easily by dehydrating or stir frying them with a little oil and freezing. You can stir fry them with the Swiss chard/beet green mix and have one of the tastiest stir fries you’ve had and it may even be frozen for eating later!

Swiss chard and beet greens! These young greens are delicious! One evening I decided to experiment and see what the best way was to prepare them and had a lot of fun doing it! There were up for the tasting: raw salad, sautéed, steamed, and boiled greens. Condiments available for testing were balsamic vinegar, soy sauce, salt, lemon juice, crushed black pepper, apple cider vinegar and Italian dressing. The raw salad was very good and a little lemon juice and black pepper was good but balsamic vinegar or Italian dressing complemented it well also. Sautéed was probably the all around favorite! Have a little olive oil in the bottom of your pan (doesn’t take much!) toss in a generous amount of chopped green onions and lightly sauté them then add your chopped Swiss chard and beet greens. If desired you may like a little salt or soy sauce over the resulting delicious result! Steamed was best if you added some onions and salt in while steaming. Boiled and drained greens are not my favorite for many reasons (a few reasons being the flavor is not as good, it kills all the good enzymes and many vitamins and minerals are lost) but adding some salt or apple cider vinegar to the water improved the flavor.

Mizzuna is a new crop for us to try this fall and has a mild mustard greens flavor without the “peppery bite” which mustard typically has. Mizzuna would be great in salad mixes, sandwiches or even a salad by itself!

Also new for us is salad mixes. There are a few to choose from and we’d love having feedback on how you enjoy them!Continue reading »

Some good friends took Josh around to see the sights, including Lake Michigan, while he was in Milwaukee.

Farmer Josh is back on the farm! And it is so nice to have him back.

After spending three months in the city I think he’s glad to be back as well. Josh’s time was well spent at Growing Power in Milwaukee. He was able to connect with some folks who were willing to share their knowledge in areas such as vermiposting and aquaponics, areas he has had a desire to learn more about. Many friendships were made and valuable lessons learned.

Josh had been expecting me to arrive on the evening of July 8 ready to load his belongings in the car and head back home early the next morning. Unknown to him though, we were making plans to surprise him and arrive early with not only me, but with Steve and Jena as well. Steve had called Growing Power to find out what we needed to do to be able to work as volunteers for a couple of days. A required volunteer orientation session is offered every Saturday at 10 a.m. so we made plans to be on hand for the orientation offered on Saturday, July 7, the day before Josh was expecting me to pick him up.

Camping at Lake Lenwood

Steve, Jena and I traveled the 12 hours to Milwaukee on Friday and set up camp at a campsite we had reserved near a pretty little lake north of Milwaukee. The next morning we headed into Milwaukee to find Growing Power and hopefully surprise Josh.

When we arrived we had to walk across the front of the Growing Power property all the time wondering what we would do it Josh saw us before we saw him. We made it to the GP store and introduced ourselves to the lady behind the counter. Clara, as we soon learned, had spent time talking to Josh and, it seemed had “adopted” him. After sharing hugs and her appreciation of Josh, this dear lady took us out onto the property to find Josh. Some of the other staff indicated that he was in the chicken house so we headed that way. As we neared the chicken house Clara called to Josh and he came bounding out of the house and soon had the most classic look of disbelief on his face I’ve seen. It appeared we had genuinely surprised him! Hugs and laughter then followed – it was so much fun!Continue reading »